Hey Everybody. I love cows :smitten: and I want to talk about them so here's the thread.

It's in the companion animals section because I have a steer called Joey as a compnaion animal and I had a retired dairy cow as well, but she died nearly a year ago now.

If anyone has any questions or comments about cows please put them here.

when I was 8, my class went on a field trip to a place called Hidden Villa. They had all sorts of animals. I saw the cows, and I looked into one's big brown eyes and fell in love! I brushed her too!!
:smitten:

Ok, here's a story about a cow.

Ashley was a friesian dairy cow. When she was a calf and I was seven I reared her for calf club (a school thing where you reared a calf then took it to school one day and competed for ribbons). After that she went and lived on my Uncle's farm where she had about 12 calves, but sadly most of them were bulls and so were sold for veal (in NZ veal calves are killed straight away, we call them bobby calves). Two were heifers (girls) and were kept to go into the herd when they were two years old. Although Ashley only knew these calves for 2 - 4 days each, she remembered them when they went into the herd. I would go into my Uncle's cowshed at milking time and see all three of them lined up one after the other in the bail being milked.

Ashley part two.

When it came time that Ashley was too old to be a dairy cow anymore, I wouldn't let my Uncle sell her, so she came to live at my parents' farm. We all thought that she was too old to get in calf again so we didn't bother keeping her away from the bull (as she would have had to have been seperated from the other cows). She did get in calf and seeing as how she was so old and we don't milk cows anyway, we decided that she (and her friend Claudia who was in the same situation) would keep her calf.
Ashley had a little girl called Emily, but having been a dairy cow all her life, Ashley's udder was producing far too much milk for this little calf. So we took Ashley to our retired cowshed to relieve the pressure. She did not want to go. Looking back at it now I think she associated going to the cowshed with having her calf taken away because that was how my Uncle had always done it. So we eventually got her in there and milked her a little, thn put her back in the paddock with Claudia and Emily. Emily was sitting in the long grass where Ashley left her, but she couldn't see her there when she returned to the paddock. Ashley just stood by the gate for an hour looking forlorn until I realised that she thought Emily was gone. I went and picked Emily up out of the long grass and called to Ashley. She turned and looked, gave out the most beautiful moo and then came running over to Emily and started sniffing and licking her. This from a cow who had convinced us that she was no longer capable of running (she was 13 then).
Ashley died when Emily was about 1. Emily was with her the night that it was just too cold. Of course I was devastated, but I knew that she had died a happy cow, with the only one of her babies that she ever got to keep.

Very touching story!

What a great story!
I love cows too! And pigs! I'm scared of chickens though, go figure. I'm not very fond of birds. I guess because cows and pigs move slowly so I feel more secure. :lol:
I've never thought they made any noise that sounded like "moo" though. It's more like "Mrawooo". Oh, we need a cow smilie! :yes:
Last year at the fair they had some cows with their calves there. They gave the animals a rest and closed off the petting part for a while but as I was walking by one of the cows was staring out the fence. I felt so bad for her, all penned up, so I walked over and I was talking to her. She sort of pressed her face against the fence so I touched her nose. I was stroking her nose and she sort of closed her eyes a little and the owner came running over screaming that she bites so I should get my hand away! He saw me stroking her face and he said "Well she usually bites, I would be careful ma'am cow bites can be serious". lol I think I said something like "She just knows I'm not going to eat her, huh girl?". I think they have beautiful eyes.
Mary

I love cows. (and everyone's stories about cows)

My uncle had a dairy farm and when I was little I used to pretend I was Flo from Mel's Diner (sorry dating myself there). So I would be the waitress and take their order and feed them their silage. It is weird because I never really liked animals as a kid - but I loved cows. :smitten:

When I was older my Dad had cattle and one of the cows would always seek me out when I went in the barn. I named her Peaches and she is the reason I am a vegan today (along with a wonderful vegan friend I have).

Yay, this is cool.
I often have cows try to get my hand in their mouths but none of them have actually bitten me yet. I think it's a sort of residual behaviour from their childhood when they were taught to drink from a cafeteria, rather than from their Mums who would have done a much better job anyway. They also like to lick my gumboots because they're made of rubber, the same as the cafeteria teats.

My daughter is a HUGE cow fan. She started collecting everything cow about ten years ago. I don't have to tell you what her room looked like! She moved out last year. (Whew!) :)

cows are my absolute fave :)

We have a nearly two year old cow at my parents' place at the moment. Sadly she'll soon be going back to the dairy farm she came from for a life of servetude and loss. We called her Curious Brown becasue she was the only one in the mob of freisians (black and white) who obviously had some jersey heritage as well because she was brown. She also gets into everything. You park the bike in the paddock and she'll soon be investigating. She points out all the weak points in the fencing system. She nearly went into the drain one time while investigating an eroded spot along the fence beside the drain, so we made a retaining wall there. And gates started mysteriously being opened around the farm. Gates where the latch was on the inside of the paddock, in the paddocks where Curious' mob hangs out. So we had to put extra latches on those gates which were on the outside of the paddock. She'll also investigate us, which means that a handful of grass now goes down pretty well.
I'll be sad when she goes. I just hope that her personality shines through at her new/old home as well and she gets treated well.

We have a nearly two year old cow at my parents' place at the moment. Sadly she'll soon be going back to the dairy farm she came from for a life of servetude and loss. We called her Curious Brown becasue she was the only one in the mob of freisians (black and white) who obviously had some jersey heritage as well because she was brown. She also gets into everything. You park the bike in the paddock and she'll soon be investigating. She points out all the weak points in the fencing system. She nearly went into the drain one time while investigating an eroded spot along the fence beside the drain, so we made a retaining wall there. And gates started mysteriously being opened around the farm. Gates where the latch was on the inside of the paddock, in the paddocks where Curious' mob hangs out. So we had to put extra latches on those gates which were on the outside of the paddock. She'll also investigate us, which means that a handful of grass now goes down pretty well.
I'll be sad when she goes. I just hope that her personality shines through at her new/old home as well and she gets treated well.


Aww poor her. It's so sad that she has to go back.

It really cuts me up. This happens every year because my parents run dairy replacements, we rear them from less than one year old to nearly two, teach them to follow us from paddock to paddock, give them lots of food and love, and then they have to go back to where they came from. It's awful because you look at them in the paddock, all waiting to be Mums. They're so happy and playful, and so trusting. They just don't know what they're in for. I think that by far the worst thing that ever happens to dairy cows is that their calves are taken off them.
Twice now I've had the experience of seeing a cow's reaction when she thinks her calf has been taken away but the realises that she gets to keep it for a while longer at least. I've never seen such happiness.
I've also seen cows running along the fenceline after a trailer of calves that aren't even theirs, and heard their cries towards the calf pen from the cowshed. It's heart wrenching.

Yay - pictures are working again. Here's where to see a photo of Ashley and Emily (mentioned earlier).


http://www.veggieboards.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=6720&c=501

and here's Ashley's old friend Claudia with her calf, Porcelina. She fed her unitl she was over a year old, by which point she was as big as her Mum.

http://www.veggieboards.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=6721&c=501

Um, the closest I've ever been to a cow was watching City Slickers.

cow love! :smitten:

oh, so cute. What breed is that? ...such small ears.

oh, so cute. What breed is that? ...such small ears.


hm...I'm not sure of the breed :/ I did a search, but couldn't find anything

Is that you in the photo?

Is that you in the photo?

yep! :)

I havn't had much contact with cows but they interest me.

I had a pet cow as a child, bottle fed baby Jersey?? She was a golden yellow color and very sweet.
Her mom was a milk cow but according to the farmer she was an oopsy baby literaly a case of the bull next door breaking into the female dairy cattles field and daddy was not a dairy cow.

She would follow you around like a dog and she started to grow little horn buds which she thought it was great fun to hook them into your pantsand toss her head a little to set you offbalance.
She never got to the size of the other cows for some reason and as a kid I never thought to ask, it was cool to have a "little" cow.

When we moved she was sold to a rancher down the road who promised that she would not go to slaughter.

She was however slaughtered because of her 5th calf being born and not viable the guy desided she was a liability to the farm if she could not produce live young.
We didnt find out till after the fact

That's so sad. My Uncle once sold a cow that he had given me to rear as a calf without telling me. Her name was Tapanga.

What was your jersey girl's name?
She might have been little just because she was a jersey, or was she born later than the other calves?
Late calves tend to be smaller cows because they stop growing when they calve and since farmers want all the cows to calve around the same time, they don't have as much time to grow as the earlier born ones.

This is a poem I wrote about a cow I knew, number 157. She was a pain in the farmer's arse but I loved her. The only thing keeping her from being sold was that she gave so much milk, I think she was surprised when I was kind to her...



157

You’re old
older than your years
but life has been hard on you

They took your calf again
like every year
you should have seen it coming

You walk so slowly
are you tired?
or is this your one rebellion?

I can see the muscles
under your skin
to be food someday

Your head is lowered
like your back
under the weight of your stomach

But I can see your eyes
they watch me
though I’m behind you

I see life in them
and sometimes
you let me pat your face

Slavery it seems
my 157
couldn’t have happened to a nicer person